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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA federal court has lifted the injunction on the Indiana abortion law that incited Justice Clarence Thomas to write his 2019 concurring opinion which equated birth control and abortion with eugenics.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana issued a final judgment and granted Indiana’s motion to vacate the declaratory judgment and injunction against the state law that prohibits abortions on the basis of gender, race, or disability.
In the two-page order issued July 18, the court noted the new ruling was justified in light of the “significant change in the law” brought by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Previously, the federal courts had blocked the provisions included in House Enrolled Act 1337, which was passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2016.
A key part of the bill was the anti-discrimination provision. This provision prohibited abortions sought solely because of the sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry or disability of the fetus. Also, the provision held that anyone who knowingly or intentionally performed an abortion in violation of the law could be subject to the disciplinary sanctions governing health care professionals as well as civil liability for wrongful death.
In addition, the law required abortion providers to inform their patients of the anti-discrimination provisions.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the ruling a victory.
“There is something particularly repugnant about discriminating against a child because of his or her race, sex or disability,” Rokita said in a press release. “To choose to end a child’s life on that basis while he or she is still in the womb is especially tragic. Hoosiers can be grateful that Indiana is now free to enforce a law rooted in common sense, compassion and justice.”
Planned Parenthood, which challenged HEA 1337, did not respond to a request for comment by IL deadline.
This is the third injunction to be lifted on an Indiana abortion law since Dobbs. The federal court has ended the prohibitions on parental notification and on the law banning a second-trimester abortion procedure.
Under the order issued in September 2017 in Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. et al. v. Commission, Indiana State Department of Heath, et al., 1:16-cv-00763, the district court found the provisions were unconstitutional.
Likewise, the district court blocked the provision that mandated aborted fetal tissue be either buried or cremated by the facility performed the abortion. The law also gave women the option of burying, cremating or disposing of the tissue herself.
A split 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court. After the appellate court denied the state’s petition for an en banc hearing, Indiana filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court.
That petition was distributed among the justices 15 times between late 2018 and early 2019. Finally, in May 2019, a per curiam decision let stand the injunction on the anti-discrimination provision but reversed the prior ruling on the disposal of fetal remains.
Thomas joined the per curiam decision with a 20-page concurring opinion. He focused on the anti-discrimination provision and, while he agreed with the decision not to address the issue at that time, he asserted the Supreme Court would have to confront the constitutional questions of such laws.
The justice wrote the early birth control movement and support for abortion developed alongside the eugenics movement. He stated that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger “recognized the eugenic potential” to her cause of promoting access to birth control.
“Each of the immutable characteristics protected by this law can be known relatively early in a pregnancy, and the law prevent them from becoming the sole criterion for deciding whether the child will live or die,” Thomas wrote. “Put differently, this law and other laws like it promote a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
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